Ideation strategy

Ideation is not just about generating ideas but, and equally important, about ideas communication. That is, the idea presented should stand out in some way, or stand out from the crowd in a compettion. Although there can be no guaranteed way of achieving this, a few suggestions have emerged over time. For example, the concept is presented with an-easy-to-understand, compelling solution organised around a simple, and striking idea, such as Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York.. However, a simple, attention seeking idea that carries the whole project is not always the most persuasive, or the most likely winner because the "big idea" might not be so much simple as simplistic. For complex design tasks, or briefs, ideation may require a more nuanced approach for which a single-idea based proposal might not be the winning ticket. The Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, for example, was designed from the inside out by Frank Gehry working with world-leading Japanese acousticians. So while there can be no single winning formula, what seems a sure-footed ideation strategy is effective and clear communication that explains the idea in its full context, both verbally and visually. The strategy may include the use of metaphor, particularly when design teams need to connect with the end users on a deeper emotional, intellectual, or experiential level.

Ideation and memory

To better understand the psychology of ideation, we must look at the mental process involved in generating new and meaningful ideas. And — from a cognitive perspective– ideation is a cognitive process generated by making new connections across different regions of the brain. Many cognitive functions draw on our experiences to make the right cognitive connections. This suggests that while some individuals may have a higher aptitude for creativity, ideation is a skill that can learned and improved on. The skill aspect of ideation highlights, in turn, the integration of memory and ideas generation, or, how ideation is driven by memory. That is,  in the context of creative problem solving, ideators need to find ways to reach their memory to find information that will be relevant to solving the problem. Or, as argued by Art Markman, a cognitive scientist, the key route to finding creative solutions to a problem is to find information in your memory that will help you to solve the problem in some way. He concludes, all creative work requires using your existing knowledge to help you to do new things. Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/ulterior-motives/201510/creativity-is-memory

Neuroscience of ideation?

What is going on in our brains when we are creating? This is a question that has long intrigued designers, both in practice and education, because creative thinking involves the discovery of novel connections which is intimately tied to learning. More specifically, in neuroscience, most reserchers agree that two elements are central to creativity. First and foremost, it reflects our capacity to generate ideas that are original, unusual or novel in some way. The second element is that these ideas also need to be satisfying, appropriate or suited to the context in question. However, many of the empirical findings in relation to creativity are not in relation to originality but to associated factors like fluency and flexibility. These facts challenge a single definition that can be applied across all manifestations of creativity regardless of whether the "object" being judged is a work of art or a scientific theory. Scott Barry Kaufman, a US humanistic psychologist, says that what happens in the brain when we engage in a creative mode versus an uncreative mode remains uncertain, and notably in the explorative-generative cycle that is in place during the creative mode. Temporal factors also pose stumbling blocks in studying the brain basis of creativity. This is so because while neuroscientific methods are great at capturing the workings of the brain in short-term present, the creation of an original work of art or a novel scientific theory all transpire over extended periods of time. What is clear, however, according to Dr Kaufman, is that much of what triggers a creative mode as opposed to an uncreative mode is situational. That is, the creative mode is called for in contexts that are unclear, vague and open-ended. For example, so called "wicked problems", where there is no single solution to the problem, a situation or context that is familiar to many designers.

Ideation refinement

Ideas appear in many guises, some like a flash to be quickly made into something, others to develop slowly, worked, reworked, changed, modified or abandoned. In developing an idea to the stage where it is more likely to be endorsed than rejected, the idea may go through a process of refinement or clarification. Let's for a moment imagine such a process of idea refinement where the "raw" idea is made "pure" through applying the additive colour system. That is, RGB, the system's three primary colours, is perceived as coloured light made white. Imagine, then, that the red colour would take out any unethical or corrupting aspect of the idea, the green colour any unsustainable or harmful component, and the blue colour any disagreeable or ugly element of the idea. The idea, then, in this thought experiment to illustrate the complexity of ideation, is perceived as a broad spectrum light source shown as white light, or a refined idea. That is, a pure idea, free of any contaminant - as pure as natural sunlight.

Multisensory ideation

Designers use a range of tools to visualise their ideas. In this, traditional arts and crafts methods remain powerful means for expressing and developing ideas and concepts, perhaps even more so when designers and consumers alike seek out tactility and signs of a human touch as a counter to life lived increasingly impacted by digitisation, automation and globalisation. Indeed, physical interaction with things, or "thinking with the hands" can stimulate ideation (Mies van der Rohe, whose practice and teaching of architecture were influenced by his early training as a stonemason, brought a load of bricks to the classroom so the students could experience the material first-hand) . For comparison, consider a game of Chess: players naturally touch and move their pieces across the chess board. If thinking were simply done "in the head", what's the purpose of these physical moves? Thinking with the hands, then, as in manipulating materials, say, to build a physical model, becomes an ideation tool for problem solving. In other words, the capacity to ideate depends not just on cognitive ability, or abstract thinking, but on material things and people around us. Such a multisensory approach to ideation seems most apt when considering sustainabble production for a harmonious future with people and the planet.

Idea mapping

In the context of design, 'idea' is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete or abstract. Although it may seem, at times difficult to characterise concreteness and abstractness in ideation, the abstract idea may roughly overlap with the concept of a mental or cognitive map, or just about any mental representation or model, while the visual idea may take on the sign of a visual map, and the concrete idea represented in material form (physical object or artefact). But whatever shape, form or matter the idea takes, ideation is a kind of purposeful wayfinding where the ideators orient themselves in space and time with the help of ideation tools, viz, words, drawings, modelling and computing to cover both physical and cognitive creative activities. Now, wayfinding, in physical space is increasingly facilitated by technology, for example, GPS, or satellite-based radio navigation. In a similar way, ideators can navigate creative space using transformative technologies, such as artificial intelligence for data mapping while maintaining direction and control. Such use of AI-powered data mapping tools may help idea generation and facilitate innovation. That is, idea mapping to enhance ideation and break new creative ground.

It's all in the mind?

Ever since Plato started telling stories about people trapped in caves, as a means of illustrating how reality is created by the mind, philosophers have pondered the relationship between the mind (consciousness) and reality (the world as we experience it). This is generally known as the mind-body problem. Designers may not be overly excited by the mind-body problem but it touches on ideation, as part of design thinking, in that it highlights the relation, or interaction between the idea (subjectivity and intentionality) and outcome in terms of physical properties (spatio-temporal objects). Moreover, design ideas seem to have causal powers, but they also possess the mysterious property of intentionality, that is, being about other thing. Or, as the dualist might see it, the idea is in the matter, or the material world (concrete or visual ideas) but also in the computational world (abstract ideas). Intriguingly, though, simple mathematical relationships may not just tell us something about the way designers think but also something about the world. The body-mind problem, then, from a designer perspective could be conceived as fitting ideas to reality while recognising that nature is independent of ideas.